Q: How Strict Should I Be With Act Breaks?
Posted by Craig Mazin on 05 Mar 2006 at 05:02 pm | Tagged as: Q&A
End of Act II?A: Not very.
This is one of those questions, the sort that get asked all the time and garner a different answer from practically anyone you ask.
On the other hand, I’ve been asked, and I’m right, so we can finally put this entire debate to rest, right?
Riiiiight?
I’ll settle for “maybe”.
The truth is that act breaks are highly overrated by most of the so-called screenwriting “instructors” out there precisely because they are easily teachable. Pedagogy requires some sort of orthodoxy. It’s not very useful for a student to hear that “act breaks” are conceptual points or moments or possibly sequences in a narrative that may or may not clearly occur twice, thrice or up to twelve times.
Seriously, how do you grade that?
So instead, screenwriting “instructors” teach that there are three acts. Or seven. Or five. They like to pick new numbers of acts to help brand themselves. Then they tell you on what page the act break must occur.
Hooey. Baloney. Argle-bargle. Go ahead…fill in your own Montgomery Burnsian exclamation of disgust. It’s all foofera.
Act breaks are the equivalent of scene blocking for directors or f-stops for cinematographers. They’re an internal tool to help you however you need them, but they’re never supposed to be noticed by the audience. There is no hard and fast rule. They simply help you organize your own story.
Writing a movie, after all, is a nifty bit of reverse engineering, if you think about it. You imagine a story, hopefully with some kind of gestalt (fancy word day here at the AW), and then set about recreating it as a series of elements. Those elements can be sequences or scenes or moments or pages or ideas. Up to you.
When you’re wrestling with this task, you may find that intermediate steps are helpful. You can conceive of your story in three large chunks…or perhaps two…or perhaps ten.
That’s your business. No one else (particularly the audience) gives a damn. They just want a good story without any seams showing.
This is actually one of the best parts of filmmaking. It’s not like writing a classical-era symphony with its strict number of four movements, a sonata followed by a slow movement followed by a minuet & trio and concluding with a rondo. We can follow traditional structures or blow them all to hell.
The truth is that just as paper covers rock, talent covers act breaks. Talent covers formatting. Talent covers the number of brads you have.
Don’t let anyone’s orthodox view of page counts and act breaks jam you up. It turns out that a lot of great screenplays can be seen, upon analysis, to have a certain act rhythm.
That doesn’t mean the great screenwriters who wrote them were concentrating on that.
Agreed. Great point. Now, should we bullshit an exec when they ask about act breaks, if we’ve taken the who cares approach?
Personally, I think a lot of beginning writers cling to act breaks and that they must occur on page X, because they long for something tangible to cling to, an idea that a formula for a great script is out there. I’m a fledgling writer, and the allure of a formula is very strong.
“Let’s see. I need something interesting to happen on pages 1-5. Oh and at page 10 I need a little twist, then a another at Page 17 and by page 30 I need to end Act I and send the story in another direciton. Or is that formula from the 80s?”
I think it comes down to one scary question. Are you a great story teller?
cvcobb:
Yup. Bullshit ‘em.
Thank god.
I’ve been banging my head against the wall out of frustration at all these experts telling me that my second act reversal needs to happen on THIS page and I must give the antagonist a nice meaty sc ene on THAT page I need to have a dog make it’s first appearance on SUCH AND SUCH page. When anyone brings up some world-class movie which seems to undercut or contradict the per theory of the moment, the expert usually says “that wasn’t really a good movie” or “it would have been so much better if they had followed MY particular orthodoxy.”
Now I can relax and get back to making a really cool story. . . . B
Obviously not every script is going to be the same page length so I don’t know why certain things must happen on certain page numbers. It should be relative to the script and to the story.
brett n
i’ve heard that. luckily, i’ve never taken a class on screenwriting (or any writing) so i’ve never had to deal with pedagogy. why teach in that manner? it’s not common sense that a certain element must occur on, say, page 8. not 7 or 9, but 8.
i’d walk out of a class where the teacher said that
z
Just to clarify … if you’re writing television, television is all about act breaks, or “act outs.” The act out is the moment of great suspense or emotion that your audience sees just before the tampax commercial, and keeps them from switching to another show. It is hard to overestimate the importance of act outs in TV. If, for example, you are writing a tv spec script, and your act outs are weak, but the writing is superb, you probably will not get hired.
Amen and hallelujah!
My first screenwriting teacher in Montreal didn’t use those guidelines at all, but I do think they would have been useful at the time. They’re kind of like the training wheels in screenwriting, I think. Now that I’ve got enough completed feature scripts under my belt I’m a lot more comfortable to break the “rules” if it works. But there are people out there who simply have no grasp at all of structure, and in those cases, I’m all for the act break and page rules.
Craig -
I agree. Bullshit the execs when they insist on talking act breaks or Syd Field. But it’s not really bullshit — it’s just the only language tools they often have to discuss the story — if they’re calling it out, likely something isn’t working for them, or the story is flagging. But the odds are something’s happening on or about the page they want to talk about. Or something is happening to your character or the main spine of the story. Call it an act break or a story beat. Even if it’s page 40, you can discuss moving that beat up, or admit you write long first acts and what changing it gets you versus what you give up. Mostly it’s a waste of time, like discussing the paper you printed on instead of words on it.
Act breaks do seem to matter in TV though, and in my experience you can’t really dance around the point. The format acknowledges the breaks and you will be expected to hook the audience into returning. And it ought to be with something relevant to the central through-line, A-story, or whatever you want to call it.
Though I heard many people (mostly, interestingly enough, struggling writers) espousing very rigid conformity with regards to act structure and I agree with Craig’s general point that this mentality is often taken to a ridiculous extreme.
However, I found, at least while writing my first few screenplays, that trying to plan my script (albeit somewhat loosely) around these concepts was enormously helpful.
Now, it’s more or less become second nature – until I purposefully disregard it.
I think as a tool for the novice screenwriter, act structure can be very helpful, since I have encountered many, many badly-written scripts with a terrible sense of pacing and structure which really could have benefitted from a little more structural orthodoxy.
Well, I teach this stuff — but always stress it should be a help and never a hindrance — it’s fine to say ignore it all, but what do you do when the muse won’t come? Conclude you’re not “a great storyteller”. Wouldn’t we all have concluded we suck by now? …I think it does help to have some technique to call on at those times. I think the only rule is “don’t be boring” — and everything else you do, and the rules you follow and break thereafter derive from that. (you know, until they don’t).
chris
“This is one of those questions, the sort that get asked all the time and garner a different answer from practically anyone you ask.”
Actually, there seems to be major concurrence around the Scribosphere. I said virtually the same thing over at my blog, Alex pointed the writer to an excerpt from his book saying the same thing, and Scott the Reader’s answer appeared over at Vince DC’s blog and also said about the same thing.
Good thing we can agree on something! Now, whether this can be taught or not opens a whole other (and already old) can of worms!
All I know is that on page 72 you need to have a reference to someone’s death, at least two pithy statements by the protagonist, and at least one use of ellipses. Otherwise, your script won’t sell.
Derek:
No, no, no. You’re way off on this.
Page 72 is reserved for flashbacks and montages, i.e., “That geek really isn’t all that geeky after all”.
And on page 110 (when your script should DEFINITELY be ending–no matter what), the younger cop has to look at the older cop and say:
“You really ARE too old for this shit.”
How the hell did you ever sell anything anyway?
Don’t forget the obligatory fart joke, or reference to anal warts, on page 51 (generally found 2/3 of the way down the page).
I think you guys are mocking people.
That’s rude.
I like that in a person. . . . B
now this is pedantic, but i firmly beleive in starting the script on page 1. i offer no flexibility in this. when my students start their scripts on page 14 or 91 or whatever, i fail them. one of my students recently turned in a romantic comedy that started on page 47 with the first act turning point on page 11, followed quickly by the midpoint on page 13. he said he liked the flow. i just sneered.
they offer the whiny ‘but, i don’t agree with classical structure! i’m starting my own thing!’ i demand they get out of my sight.
starting on page 14! pure tripe! the start should firmly affixed to page one
z
now this is pedantic, but i firmly beleive in starting the script on page 1. i offer no flexibility in this. when my students start their scripts on page 14 or 91 or whatever, i fail them. one of my students recently turned in a romantic comedy that started on page 47 with the first act turning point on page 11, followed quickly by the midpoint on page 13. he said he liked the flow. i just sneered.
they offer the whiny ‘but, i don’t agree with classical structure! i’m starting my own thing!’ i demand they get out of my sight.
starting on page 14! pure tripe! the start should firmly affixed to page one
z
I think you are really talking about two very different subjects.
Good writing and bad writing.
The last first. Bad writing.
Bad writing exposes all the ill fitting joints, making the viewer aware of the underlying construct.
Good writing hides the seamless joints, concealing the underlying construct from the viewer.
Screenwriting is a constructive art form that requires a clearly structured narrative.
Writers are aware of the logic and dramaturgy applications of structure. The sole purpose of which is to manipulate the audience’s intellectual and emotional state.
Act breaks define momentous and important moments in the character’s journey and struggle.
The audience may not ever be aware that an “act break” has occurred but I submit that if they are not aware that something important has happened that significantly alters the hero’s journey and struggle, and alterers the audience’s intellectual and emotional state, then the writer has utterly failed.
So while it’s not necessary for the audience to be aware of the act break as an underlying structural construct, they do need to be aware of it as seemingly organic event that significantly alters the hero’s journey and their response to it.
Otherwise the story is not increasing the audience’s involvement in the story which makes it unlikely the audience will be moved to a heightened state of catharsis – which is the point of drama.
There are certainly more than one way to engage your audience. I’m not suggesting that act breaks are your only means of achieving audience engagement, but they are important and effective ones which is the real reason why so many instructors emphasize them.
To dismiss the importance of act breaks as some sort of blind adherence to dogmatic teachings is to completely misrepresent their dramatic function and the impact they have on audiences.
My .02
Argle-bargle?
Aw, crap – my page 72 has no pithy comments and no death references, although part of it WILL later be used for a flashback.
Maybe the five ellipses make up for that…?
Oh – and hello everyone! My first post. Please tolerate the presence of this amateur hack from England.
All the best!
I think part of it also is…we write structured because we consume structured. The tried and true three act play/movie structure is an ingrained tradition and we know it works, so it just feels right. Agreed, though, that as you work through a few scripts you definitely feel empowered to blaze your own trail.
I finished a writing class a few months ago, and our teacher definitely encouraged us to follow the three act structure. She never taught that certain things had to occur on certain pages though, with the exception of Alan’s hard-and-fast rule of beginning on page 1!
I guess overall the point remains…tell a kick-ass story and engage the audience, and you can take them on whatever ride you want to.
Like Simon above, I too would like to say “howdy to everyone”. I’m a first-timer, located in the Pacific NW, currently hammering out my first two scripts.
Cheers and contracts!
Hey Craig: The structure issue is more crucial to the screenwriting form than to any other form of writing, except the play. Perhaps because they are both living forms that need to experienced in real time and people have an internal clock that has been trained by their culture in what to expect. A novel can be 350 or 650 (like the one I’m adapting now) and both be excellent stories, a great read and feel like they have great internal structure. Short stories only have to be short, no specific length required. Poems, comic books, essays, non-fiction books, sure they all have structure but the requirements are loose.
But screenplays live or die on their structure, I believe, And I’ve read scripts that have sold, that I didn’t think had great writing, but they all had one thing in common: GREAT structure. My scripts that have sold? Great structure.
Having said that, I will throw in a caveat that I abhor strict adherence to any artificial structure system. Because by the very nature of its artificiality it makes one incredibly “mindfull” and that can kill creativity. But that’s my inherent anti-authority issue speaking.
There – easy answer right? So what do you do?
Be creative and in flow with your work, feel the movie you’re in, and the breaks should speak to you themselves. You should know when you’re running long. If not, go out and watch more movies.
I take a cue on structure from a friend of mine who has always told me he feels when he’s writing an original that he has to write the “book” first, then find the screenplay. It all comes out as screenplay of course, draft after draft, and when he’s amassed what could have been a book by sheer page count, he usually “gets “his script. The journey of discovery however, is unpleasant for him by its sheer volume of pages never used and lost scenes (as he tells it). It’s why this guy hates writing originals. Too brutal for him, he loves adapting.
I like originals. And I like work-for-hire. I don’t mind the process (aside from the sleepless nights and the hair pulling). What falls to the floor I put in a huge file and raid regularly year after year. No writing is ever wasted by my reckoning. It’s either making you better, making your work better, or creating scenes that will live again someday in another piece.
More on how I tackle this issue, for novices or veterans, posted at: http://www.screenwriterbones.blogspot.com
I generally point toward a major break or change about 25 to 30 pages into my script and about 25 to 30 pages from the end of the script. And I try to have a major plot change or revelation about halfway through the script.
But I’ve really fallen in love with the use of TV “act outs” as mentioned above. Breaking the script down into 7-10-page “mini-acts” that end with a moment of great suspense and emotion helps me to organize the story and character development in a more dramatic and fluid fashion. And it also helps me in rewrites, since the flaws of 7-10-page mini-acts stand out more clearly and are easier to correct than when I’m dealing with 30+ plus pages or even an entire script.
I wouldn’t advise this for everyone, but if you think it might help you, try it. Pretend you’re trying to sustain the audience’s interest through recurring tampax commercials. The effect in a feature script can be very explosive. And no one will know your “secret.”
There are two sides. The insiders and the outsiders. If you are on the inside hired to write, some bean counter is breathing down your neck for those very commercial page breaks. It does not matter whether you are writing for TV or theater release. Ultimately it will be on TV. For the outsiders, I believe that you have to learn the tools of the “trade”. Until you are a household name you should be as much a slave as you can to page breaks, act outs, page counts and forget about three acts, forget about 30/60/30 and begin to think in terms of the first three, as a hook/teaser, then on to the next 10, then on to the next 15, and 15, and 15 until you have written your big screen masterpiece in the form of a TV MOW. Then, as I said, when you are a household name, you can make the rules up as you go along.
As an aspiring amateur screenwriter, I found it very frustrating (and liberating) while trying to decipher all of the rules in formatting. Each and every “industry book” I poured through never seemed able to agree on any distinct set of rules, other than the obvious ones – font/size, number of pages. I got to thinking that perhaps they purposely mislead any would be competition with errant advice. So I basically made the decision to go it alone, using a few key tips I happen to respect, and do my own thing. The end result is an original spec script I happen to be proud of. We’ll see if I’m able to generate any interest in it (that’s a whole other thing, entirely).
Your blog is very cool. Thanks for putting yourself out there for the rest of us.
~Devin
This is a v interesting issue and its kinda fun to look at how novelists deal with acts. Recently, I was stunned, when my daughter announced she had got to Chapter 50 (!) of Funke’s Thief Lord. The book itself is quite snall. Interested, I had a quick look at how Tolkien and Lewis structured their books. Lewis was easy – his (Narnia) books are astonishlingly consistent – 60K words and 15 chapters of almost exact same length. Tolkien is more ‘freeform’ with the LOTR volumes each being 220K words and 20 plus chapters, but varied as per the dramatic needs of the story. (Interesstingly, Tolkien was not much fussed by consistent spelling – there is an ongoing debate over his use of ‘farther’ and ‘further’).
So what to do with screen-writing and acts? Lewis’ writings lend themselves well to the rule of three. Tolkiens’s do not. Tolkien was highly inflenced by ‘Beowulf”, a prose that is astonishingly resistent to rendering to film. The LOTR films can be viewed as a three act work, in three films, each film being an ‘actless’ narrative prose. And the Thief Lord” ? This movie that has much akin to the actless structure of “Run Lola Run”.
So do acts matter? Perhaps, every page (or scene) can be an act. Or maybe the movie a single act. Or anything betwixt and between.
Oh, another comment, ‘Guyot’ questioned ‘argle-bargle’. I’m a Brit, my dad used the words ‘argie-bargie’, as in:
No more argie-bargie young man, up to bed, NOW!
It implies someone who is being disagreeable, with overtones of acting like a barrack-room lawyer. Perhaps argle-bargle is an americanized version.